By the mid 1990s, the importance of the non-interference norm seemed to be much reduced among European governments. Unlike in the cases of Bangladesh, Cambodia and elsewhere during the Cold War, European governments were no longer holding to the line that ‘we should not interfere in the internal affairs of another country’ if there were massive human rights violations being committed there. Furthermore the cases of Bosnia and Rwanda illustrated the impact of the legal norm against genocide on European governments: to punish individuals responsible for genocide, they helped to set up the ICTY and ICTR. But the social norm apparently had little impact on governments – as seen not only in the strict definitions of genocide employed (with the exception of Germany in the Bosnia case) but also in their reluctance to do more than what is clearly required by the Convention. In both Bosnia and Rwanda, European governments had shown little or no willingness to intervene with coercive military measures to stop the violence.

But in the years following the Rwanda and Srebrenica genocides, there was some soul-searching about what could or should have been done in response. As noted in the previous chapters, the Dutch government requested a study into Srebrenica, the Belgian Senate conducted an inquiry into Belgium's role in Rwanda, and the French National Assembly undertook two ‘information missions’ regarding the French role in both Srebrenica and Rwanda. The Belgian Prime Minister apologised to Rwanda for not doing more.